Man and Beast

My brother is showing off his new band uniform for the Murray High School band.  Our dog Tippy is checking out the smell of his shoes.  The shoes had to be painted with a white polish to keep them white.  It was opaque enough that it was like whitewashing a picket fence to get it to be clean and white again. Tippy was the first dog that I remember in the family. They had a border collie which they lost the year before I was born.  Tippy was get outdoor dog that fathered many of puppies in the farm neighbor hood.  I remember his smells as he loved rolling around in about everything. He reminds of a part border collie but he was a mixed breed.

I had a photo of my dad with the twin calves.  Couldn't find the photo so I give you just the calves.  It was rare and profitable to have cows give birth to two calves.  Hereford is the breed in case you couldn't tell.  They survived the winter births in March down in low valley areas of our pasture out of the wind. These two were brought to the barn as they were small and dad wanted to be sure they survived.

Larry and Dwight holding their killer beasts.  The cats were a major way for us to learn how to relate to animals.  It was also a bad way to learn about life and death as cats tended to get them selves in trouble and skip the nine lives situation. 

My dad's assigned regiment in Washington DC had a mascot German Shepard.  The man is covering the dogs eyes so the flash of the camera won't scare him. 

My oldest brother Ron is showing off his heifer that he showed in the 4-H county fair.  She was a gentle cow and we had her for many years giving us a calf each spring.  I suffer emotionally when I think of the day my Dad called up a man to sell off his herd of 27 Herefords. He was selling the farm and they had to go. I was in college at the time, 1970.  I know my dad cried and I didn't have to be there to know it.  That is the part of raising animals that makes it difficult and they do become like family members and our emotions are so intertwined with them.

My youngest son Aaron and his two dogs.  The one is a puppy that he got so the other dog would have company.  Aaron was terrified of dogs when young and now carries his babies around the house in his arms.  The are great dogs who get to enjoy their home in Maine. We always have to ask how Penny and Hannah are doing as they are the closet thing we have to grandchildren.

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Mama don't take my Kodachrome away.....

With Kodak filing bankruptcy and my discovering a new photo, I thought I would make up my own theme.  The photo I found is pretty gaudy in color and I did tone it down a little with my photoshop program.  The thing that amazed me about the photo is the change one can see from photos with life's physical changing process, the change in housing and the change in clothing styles, even if it is only 70 or more years.

The house has been moved to Lorimor, but my Grandfather Charles Burgus and Grace Turner Burgus built and lived in this house north of Murray on a farm.  He was a farmer and they raised 10 children in the house. They did move away from the four square house so that the children could attend high school in Murray by buying a farm near there.









The ten Burgus children are at left.  My dad is the silly one on the right.  They look like they were just back from church.  The two on the left front are twins and my dad is on the far right. Dad was born in 1918 and he looks about ten here so 1928 is my guess for the time period.

Here is an informal shot of the ten at the city park with their mom and dad in the middle.  Mama and Papa I should have said.  They were a close bunch even though eventually three of them moved away from the Murray area.  One brother ended up living in Creston, Iowa, another brother was in the Indianola area and a sister lived in the Chariton, Iowa area.  The rest lived on farms in the Murray and Osceola, Iowa area. One sister went off to Oregon and another sister followed for a couple of years but eventually all were back living close to each other.

I have a first cousin that could probably date this photo for me.  I know that the one brother Carl in the back row had earlier lost his only son in a drowning accident and you can see the effects on him in the photo.  Ruby in the front row, next to my grandmother Grace was the one who moved out to Oregon and worked for the war effort, welding in a plane factory.  She did return to the Murray area after the war with her husband. I don't know if this is before the war but my dad looks young, left front row and he doesn't look like he has gone to war at that time.


Back row: Eva Burgus Dovenspike, Carl Burgus, Doris Burgus Forbes, Donald Burgus, Amye Burgus Ramsey, Cecil Burgus, Mary Burgus Farr
Front row: Jesse Burgus, Charles Thomas Burgus, Grace Elizabeth Turner Burgus, Ruby Burgus Henderson, Ralph Burgus

Kodachrome photo appears from the past and it is such a typical home photo.  I like the way that the one guy is cut off and my Uncle Donald can't be seen at all except you know he is standing behind Aunt Amye with her beehive hair.  If she had not worn her hair that way, we would have seen Donald.

It almost seems like time traveling ahead a hundred years, but it probably isn't any more than 30 years or less from the photo above.  The above photo had to be in the 40's and the photo at left had to be in the late 60's.
The house was built in 1959 by my dad.
Ralph died in 1957 so they are down to nine.
It is the summer and the style of dresses must be late 60's.  We lost Aunt Ruby in the early 70's.


Front row of Aunts: Doris Forbes, Amye Ramsey, Mary Farr, Eva Dovenspike and Ruby Henderson.
Second Row:  Cecil Burgus, Jesse Burgus, Donald Burgus and Carl Burgus

I was so surprised to find this photo of color in a pile of pictures in one of my dad's old cigar boxes. It really jumped out at me as they entire group and their spouses are now all gone.  My mom was the last to pass away in 2008.  The photo brings back all the memories of the family dinners that happened every year. It was either Thanksgiving or at Christmas time.  All the uncle and aunts would be there with spouses and my cousins of the younger family members were there. Cecil, the oldest, and his wife Bertha attended but their two children had move away out of state. We sometimes saw the son Roger and his wife, but rarely did we have a visit from their daughter Cecilia. Those two being the oldest cousins are gone also.

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In the past..........

Thanks to the Penny Postcard site for sharing their photos of old.  The above building was in Murray, Iowa and was one of their first school buildings. The very first one was a wooden building this one looks like it is brick. I never saw this building and I am sure that it caught fire and was torn down. The history of these buildings usually met their final fate in that way.  I am not even certain of it's location in the town, but I figure a relative or two will help me to update that info.  I graduated from a different building in Murray that was built in the 1900's that sat on a hill that reminds me of this
location.

Edited on December 24th,

My cousin Joan Henderson Callison wrote me the following information:

The lst and 2nd schools in Murray were in the block kitty cornered northeast across the street from the present school.  Plans were being made for the present school when the brick one, pictured above, burned a month before school was out. It was thought that it was arson. They finished going to school in churches and business buildings.  Mom, Ruby Burgus Henderson and Mary Burgus Farr would have been Juniors.  Mom said that they had to ask the kids what their grades were because all the records were burned and the boys remembered them being much higher than they actually were. Mom and Mary were in the first graduating class of the current school in 1926.Grandma & Grandpa Burgus made Mom wait a year to go to high school so she and Mary were in the same class. 

Structures like the newer one are of flat roof construction. The illustration of the Woodward building a few pictures down is typical of the early 1900's style of school building. The 1926 building that Aunt Ruby and Aunt Mary graduated from is the very same building that I graduated from in 1968, 42 years later.

Another school structure that stood in Osceola, Iowa in the past shows the tower for the school bell, a carryover from the country schools who most had a tower structure built as the entry for the school and to hold the bell. As the country grew the families grew and I am sure this building became too small to handle the number of children in the town.

A structure that still stands today is the Osceola Depot.  It is still in use and the Amtrak train stops here frequently each day. When people are ready to board the train, they line up on the concrete slab and wait as a group for the train to slowly pull up to allow them to board. I don't know how fun that would be in a rain storm or snow storm as there is not covered area for them to stand.

When I was first starting out as a teacher, I taught in Sidney, Iowa.  The county seat of Fremont County was Sidney and this is the courthouse that still stands there today.  The trees have all grown in since this was taken.  This is actually the second courthouse built here as the last one was destroyed by dynamite.   The border of Iowa is more than twenty miles away but during the Civil War, the southern soldiers didn't have maps.  They were sure that they were in Missouri so they placed explosive material inside the court house and lighted a match.

 The Underground Railroad actually did go through Sidney in the 1860's. I do know that Iowa was against slavery but I don't think Iowa ever actually was attacked by the South except for this one time.

This is the Woodward, Iowa school building that was built in the early 1900's  Originally it was a Kindergarten through Senior building and the stories were told that the bottom floor was left with a dirt floor for it's early years. The school children went down there to play during rainy days for recess.  I am assuming that the money was tight.

I do know that they later finished the floor as I taught my first four years in this building. I was in the basement room with a concrete floor.  It is the one with the right back basement windows. I started teaching there in 1976.

The cupola was said to have blown off in the 1920's.  Do you notice all the Roman influence on this structure with the pediment over the doorway and the water line base that reminds one of Venice, France?

As with all older structures in this country we tear them down after 100 years.  It was taken down in 1993 to be replaced with a single story building.

I am off theme most every time but maybe I can dig out my Grandmothers old cookbooks and create a food theme for next week.   I seem to be behind on themes or never conforming at all.  I enjoy all the themed blogs and you can see more blogs who share in Sepia Saturday by clicking here.

This old chair..........

I was watching an old PBS special about the Civil War in the United States.  They covered the shooting of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth at the theater, showing old photos and the present day historic site.  Also they described what happened after the President was shot, saying that they took him across the street from the theater and placed him in a randomly chosen boarding house room on the first floor.  They laid him out on the bed diagonally because he was too tall for the small bed. There he lay being attended to by doctors who had none of today's technology to really give him any hope of survival.

They didn't ask permission of the man who had rented the room and since he was gone at the time,  I am sure he was surprised to find the government officials had taken over his room when he returned to the room. From my memory of things Abraham Lincoln didn't die from his wounds until a day later.

The thing that jumped out at me was the chair that was sitting in the boarding house on the right side of the bed. It had a caned seat.  I own a chair like that one in the photo, at least I thought so.

It is the same style of chair.  This chair did have a cane seat in it originally and it is the same shape.  I looked at other views of the chair in other pictures of the bedroom and it is from the same family of chairs but it is not the exact same kind of chair.

My chair has been stained mahogany and I am sure it was originally a light or medium brown wood.  From other views of the chair the side supports and bracing are all the exact same. The three spindles are the same in the back and the carved arches are the same.

I bought my chair at an auction in Sidney, Iowa. The woman who had passed away had an antique business in Omaha and a lot of things she kept at her house were antique.  I doubt this was a family piece but I suppose it could have been. The cross stitch piece really does look great on this chair even though it is covering up the cane seat opening.

I paid six dollars for it which was not a high price at the time in 1974. I assume that the crowd really were looking for more modern furniture.  I also bought some Wedgewood pieces at that sale for three or four dollars a piece.  The auctioneer was not much with selling all the small items so he let me bid the per item bid and then said I could take as many as I wanted.  There was an ashtray that I didn't take at the time but someone else certain grabbed it. The chair seemed like a wonderful item and would make a great desk chair to an antique desk.

Just for fun I am showing you an artist rendition of what he thought it might have looked like while Mr. Lincoln lay dying.  The artist has taken artistic license on the looks of the chair in the illustration.  I assume the artist would not think that people could someday get on the internet and view that actual chair in 1865. As small as the room was I really doubt that there could have been that many people in the room.

I probably will continue my research about the whole history of the company that made the chair.  I have found numerous sites that show the room which has been kept as a museum.  It was a very small room and the shooting or our president was a sad part of our history that will always be remembered.

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Town Craft in Perry, Iowa.........

The building sits on the corner of 2nd and Willis Street in Perry, Iowa.  It was built in the early 1900's. The photo shows the building in the 20's.  As you study the photo, notice the Fords and that the upstairs windows are open.  I was told that the upstairs was an office area for lawyers to do business in the town. The bank building was eventually sold to another locally owned company,  Brenton Bank, and it remained so until it's closing 20 years ago as a new building was created on a new site near there. 

My wife and I spent a few days in the restored building doing an art show call  "Art on the Prairie" in the upstairs part of the old bank. 

The Iowa State University was involved in the redevelopment and design of the bank building and the adjacent building was also included in the project.  This is the model that students and  architecture instructors designed for it's renovation.    Notice the clock that has been put back on the building.  It was not original to the building but the bank must have added it in the 1930's. They named it the Town Craft to symbolize what had been done to restore and refresh the two buildings.

This is the photo of the restored two buildings today.  On my other blog, Larry's Creative Zone, you can see photos of the inside of the second floor of this building.

The story is complicated but I want to share with you how renovation of the two building of the Town Craft were financed.  The photo above is the Hotel Pattee, named after the brothers who first built the building in the early 1900's..   It sits on the same block down the street to the west.  The person who financed it all started by restoring this gutted building.  She turned it back into a grand hotel and then continued down the street continuing the  restoration of many more buildings in the area.

Roberta Green Ahmanson, a 1967 graduate of Perry High School,  and her husband, multimillionaire philanthropist Howard Ahmanson Jr., have financed dozens of various causes. They live in California but Roberta bought a Victorian house in Perry so that she could supervise the projects here in Iowa. Many buildings in a two block area were all financed by them.  A Carnegie Library where she worked as a young woman was one that was restored.

I always like to know the rest of the story and where the Ahmanson made their money is an interesting one. How this California couple and their money made it to Perry, Iowa.

Mr. Ahmanson was in the family line that created all the water distributions to southern California.  I don't remember the name of the movie that was made which had a plot that centered around the wheeling and dealing that were done. Millions of dollars were made from that business venture. If I find out the name of the movie, it included the name China in it, I will correct this posting. Yes, Chinatown was the name of the movie.

The Ahmanson's are known for there kind giving and the Town Craft project was the second or third renovation venture after the Pattee Hotel. I was told that much of the money was trust money that they were required to spend. The Hotel Pattee was completely recreated from nothing for 11 million dollars.

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Faces.......

A year ago a student made this graphic display of his classmates of 2010.  The faces really are not much different than the past except the clothing has changed and the modern problems are different too.

The faces really do look the same as you view the ones of the 60's and the 30's. A cousin's little girl sits with a smile while my Aunt Doris stands straight with her great looking dress.  My parents are dressed in their morning everyday clothes ready to start the day in our old farmhouse.

More faces from the classes that my mom taught while she was in her late teens early twenties.  The years of teaching started in 1937 and as you can see the faces seem the same.  They could be modern people today even though the form of the picture tells us otherwise.

People who wanted a memory of themselves and the event in their lives hold themselves so still for the camera for it to capture their image.

My grandmother Brooks was so proud of all her things that she made to sell.  This is as close to a smile that she ever put out for a camera.

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Old Photos 1940's

The photo is one that my Dad brought home with him when he returned from World War 2.  I think it could be Belfium in 1943 and yet they did travel to France via other countries so it may be in another country. It is one of my unknown photos in his collection of many war time shots. I really am not sure the photo is of my dad but it could be as they took photos of each other to record their happenings of the time.

Thanks to the two blogger friends that did the research for me.  This is Karlshafen, Germany in 1945. It had to have been taken after the defeat of the country and when they were leaving the country to ship out to go home.

An unknown location but I am sure my dad thought it to be a majestic building. He, being a farm boy from the midland prairie, was familiar with small one story wooden farm houses or two story square farm homes.  A house that reminds one of a castle would be of interest to him.

The American soldiers all averaged in their early twenties in age and fishing would have been of great interest to them. The children seem interested to see what he has on his line. This photo had to be there near the city in Belgium where  my dad was stationed. He was there temporarily before he was sent out to be with the soldiers in the Battle of the Bulge.  One of my older blogs had a commenting friend tell me the name of the city as to where they were stationed but I have yet to find it in my old blogs.


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